So the test model’s quality is awesome! but when I print anything off thingiverse the quality no where near the test model. Only difference is that I’m printing from Octoprint noramlly and the quality isn’t as good as the test model. I thought it was just octoprint but I get the same poor print quality if I do the same gcode from the sd card. Can anyone give me some pointers?

More specifically what are your print settings? For example your layer height and those other settings. I would recommend that you set up your build plate dimensions to be 200x 300y instead of 200x 200y.

First layer: 150% or less… I use 100 to 110% but normally 100% as I get fantastic adhesion using FlexiPlate as my build plate.

Perimeters: this is your outside so lower should improve your finish. Try 50mm/s Note if you read about high quality prints they often talk 25mm/s

Infill: at 80mm/s you are possibly seeing the infill push the outer perimeters. Id go low like 50- 60mm/s.

Layer height: with a 0.5 nozzle 0.3 layer height works fine and might give you a better finish. They say 1/2 to 3/4 nozzle size… so that would be closer to 0.3 than 0.4. If you want it to look really nice go for 0.2.

First Layer height: you are trying to print a 0.5 layer with a 0.5 nozzle and that just doesn’t work… you will have no “squish” back that to 0.3 or 0.35 and you will find you might get better adhesion.

The images of your first print show that you are, at the minimum, having some underextrusion issues. I also had issues with under/over extrusion when I first got my Wilson II up and running. The guide that helped me the most with this was MEH4d’s Part Fitting Calibration guide. After using that guide to tune my E-steps/mm, many of my print quality issues went away. I also found that setting all of the extrusion widths in Slic3r to my nozzle diameter helped a lot, though some models require a bit of tinkering here.

You also appear to have some issues with layer shifting in your X axis. Have you set the current on your stepper drivers? Alternatively, you may be having issues with your frame not being rigid enough. Try turning down your speeds a lot (like ant0ny said). For starting out, try 40mm/s perimeter, with 25mm/s outer perimeter and 40mm/s infill. It’s gonna be slow, but it makes sense to get your printer printing well before you try to speed it up a lot.

Finally, make sure you have a part fan if you’re printing PLA. It helps a lot with tall parts.

EDIT: Also as ant0ny said, try a 0.3mm layer height, and a 0.3mm initial layer height. 0.4mm layer height is pretty large, and will worsen any underextrusion issues you may be having.

EDIT2: I’m not sure how Cura works, but Slic3r will put some of the print settings at the top of the GCode file. Open up the test GCode file in a text editor and see if there’s any info there.